Hera, the name of Juno among the Greeks.——A daughter of Neptune and Ceres when transformed into a mare. Apollodorus, bk. 3.——A town of Æolia and of Arcadia. Pausanias, bk. 6, ch. 7.——A town of Sicily, called also Hybla. Cicero, Letters to Atticus, bk. 2, ltr. 1.
Herăclēa, an ancient town of Sicily, near Agrigentum. Minos planted a colony there when he pursued Dædalus; and the town, anciently known by the name of Macara, was called from him Minoa. It was called Heraclea after Hercules, when he obtained a victory over Eryx.——A town of Macedonia.——Another in Pontus, celebrated for its naval power and its consequence among the Asiatic states. The inhabitants conveyed home in their ships the 10,000 at their return.——Another in Crete.——Another in Parthia.——Another in Bithynia.——Another in Phthiotis, near Thermopylæ, called also Trachinea, to distinguish it from others.——Another in Lucania. Cicero, For Archias, ch. 4.——Another in Syria.——Another in Chersonesus Taurica.——Another in Thrace, and three in Egypt, &c.——There were no less than 40 cities of that name in different parts of the world, all built in honour of Hercules, whence the name is derived.——A daughter of Hiero tyrant of Sicily, &c.
Heraclēia, a festival at Athens celebrated every fifth year, in honour of Hercules. The [♦]Thespians and Thebans in Bœotia observed a festival of the same name, in which they offered apples to the god. This custom of offering apples arose from this: It was always usual to offer sheep, but the overflowing of the river Asopus prevented the votaries of the god from observing it with the ancient ceremony; and as the word μηλον signifies both an apple and a sheep, some youths, acquainted with the ambiguity of the word, offered apples to the god, with much sport and festivity. To represent the sheep, they raised an apple upon four sticks as the legs, and two more were placed at the top to represent the horns of the victim. Hercules was delighted at the ingenuity of the youths, and the festivals were ever continued with the offering of apples. Pollux, bk. 8, ch. 9. There was also a festival at Sicyon in honour of Hercules. It continued two days; the first was called ὀνοματας, the second ἡρακλεια.——At a festival of the same name at Cos, the priest officiated with a mitre on his head, and in woman’s apparel.——At Lindus, a solemnity of the same name was also observed, and at the celebration nothing was heard but execrations and profane words, and whosoever accidentally dropped any other words, was accused of having profaned the sacred rites.
[♦] ‘Thisbians’ replaced with ‘Thespians’
Heracleum, a promontory of Cappadocia.——A town of Egypt near Canopus, on the western mouth of the Nile, to which it gave its name. Diodorus, bk. 1.—Tacitus, Annals, bk. 2, ch. 60.—Strabo, bks. 2 & 17.——The port town of Gnossus in Crete.
Heracleōtes, a surname of Dionysius the philosopher.——A philosopher of Heraclea, who, like his master Zeno, and all the Stoics, firmly believed that pain was not an evil. A severe illness, attended with the most acute pains, obliged him to renounce his principles, and at the same time the philosophy of the Stoics, about 264 years before the christian era. He became afterwards one of the Cyrenaic sect, which placed the summum bonum in pleasure. He wrote some poetry, and chiefly treatises of philosophy. Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.
Heraclīdæ, the descendants of Hercules, greatly celebrated in ancient history. Hercules at his death left to his son Hyllus all the rights and claims which he had upon the Peloponnesus, and permitted him to marry Iole, as soon as he came of age. The posterity of Hercules were not more kindly treated by Eurystheus than their father had been, and they were obliged to retire for protection to the court of Ceyx king of Trachinia. Eurystheus pursued them thither; and Ceyx, afraid of his resentment, begged the Heraclidæ to depart from his dominions. From Trachinia they came to Athens, where Theseus the king of the country, who had accompanied their father in some of his expeditions, received them with great humanity, and assisted them against their common enemy Eurystheus. Eurystheus was killed by the hand of Hyllus himself, and his children perished with him, and all the cities of the Peloponnesus became the undisputed property of the Heraclidæ. Their triumph, however, was short; their numbers were lessened by a pestilence, and the oracle informed them that they had taken possession of the Peloponnesus, before the gods permitted their return. Upon this they abandoned Peloponnesus, and came to settle in the territories of the Athenians, where Hyllus, obedient to his father’s commands, married Iole the daughter of Eurytus. Soon after he consulted the oracle, anxious to recover the Peloponnesus, and the ambiguity of the answer determined him to make a second attempt. He challenged to single combat Atreus the successor of Eurystheus on the throne of Mycenæ, and it was mutually agreed that the undisturbed possession of the Peloponnesus should be ceded to whosoever defeated his adversary. Echemus accepted the challenge for Atreus, and Hyllus was killed, and the Heraclidæ a second time departed from Peloponnesus. Cleodæus the son of Hyllus made a third attempt, and was equally unsuccessful, and his son Aristomachus some time after met with the same unfavourable reception, and perished in the field of battle. Aristodemus, Temenus, and Chresphontes, the three sons of Aristomachus, encouraged by the more expressive and less ambiguous word of an oracle, and desirous to revenge the death of their progenitors, assembled a numerous force, and with a fleet invaded all Peloponnesus. Their expedition was attended with success, and after some [♦]decisive battles they became masters of all the peninsula, which they divided among themselves two years after. The recovery of the Peloponnesus by the descendants of Hercules forms an interesting epoch in ancient history, which is universally believed to have happened 80 years after the Trojan war, or 1104 years before the christian era. This conquest was totally achieved about 120 years after the first attempt of Hyllus. Apollodorus, bk. 2, ch. 7, &c.—Herodotus, bk. 9, ch. 26.—Pausanias, bk. 1, ch. 17.—Paterculus, bk. 1, ch. 2.—Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, bk. 1.—Thucydides, bk. 1, ch. 12, &c.—Diodorus, bk. 1, &c.—Aristotle, Politics, bk. 7, ch. 26.
[♦] ‘deicsive’ replaced with ‘decisive’
Herăclīdes, a philosopher of Heraclea in Pontus, for some time disciple of Seusippus and Aristotle. He wished it to be believed that he was carried into heaven the very day of his death, and the more firmly to render it credible, he begged one of his friends to put a serpent in his bed. The serpent disappointed him, and the noise which the number of visitors occasioned, frightened him from the bed before the philosopher had expired. He lived about 335 years before the christian era. Cicero, Tusculanæ Disputationes, bk. 5; Letters to his brother Quintus, bk. 3.—Diogenes Laërtius, Pythagoras.——An historian of Pontus surnamed Lembus, who flourished B.C. 177.——A man who, after the retreat of Dionysius the younger from Sicily, raised cabals against Dion, in whose hands the sovereign power was lodged. He was put to death by Dion’s order. Cornelius Nepos, Dion.——A youth of Syracuse, in the battle in which Nicias was defeated.——A son of Agathocles.——A man placed over a garrison at Athens by Demetrius.——A sophist of Lycia, who opened a school at Smyrna in the age of the emperor Severus.——A painter of Macedonia in the reign of king Perseus.——An architect of Tarentum, intimate with Philip king of Macedonia. He fled to Rhodes on pretence of a quarrel with Philip, and set fire to the Rhodian fleet. Polyænus.——A man of Alexandria.
Heraclītus, a celebrated Greek philosopher of Ephesus, who flourished about 500 years before the christian era. His father’s name was Hyson, or Heracion. Naturally of a melancholy disposition, he passed his time in a solitary and unsocial manner, and received the appellation of the obscure philosopher, and the mourner, from his unconquerable custom of weeping at the follies, frailty, and vicissitudes of human affairs. He employed his time in writing different treatises, and one particularly, in which he supported that there was a fatal necessity, and that the world was created from fire, which he deemed a god omnipotent and omniscient. His opinions about the origin of things were adopted by the Stoics, and Hippocrates entertained the same notions of a supreme power. Heraclitus deserves the appellation of man-hater, for the rusticity with which he answered the polite invitations of Darius king of Persia. To remove himself totally from the society of mankind, he retired to the mountains, where for some time he fed on grass in common with the wild inhabitants of the place. Such a diet was soon productive of a dropsical complaint, and the philosopher condescended to revisit the town. The enigmatical manner in which he consulted the physicians made his applications unintelligible, and he was left to depend for cure only upon himself. He fixed his residence on a dunghill, in hopes that the continual warmth which proceeded from it might dissipate the watery accumulation and restore him to the enjoyment of his former health. Such a remedy proved ineffectual, and the philosopher, despairing of a cure by the application of ox-dung, suffered himself to die in the 60th year of his age. Some say that he was torn to pieces by dogs. Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.—Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, bk. 5.——A lyric poet.——A writer of Halicarnassus, intimate with Callimachus. He was remarkable for the elegance of his style.——A native of Lesbos, who wrote a history of Macedonia.——A writer of Sicyon, &c. Plutarch.